Sometimes it’s easy to take tags for granted.

At this time of year they’re great for finding the best places to go present shopping, the perfect party venue, or maybe locating some festive booze.

But let’s not forget the slightly less seasonal, but just as interesting tags, who deserve a good home too.

What about the dinosaurs, you wouldn’t want to make them angry would you? Or the pirhanas. In fact let’s pay a bit more attention to all the carnivores out there.

And would it hurt to look at the less cute members of the tag litter? The sweaty ones, the ones covered in spit and sawdust, and even the downright villainous ones.

Let’s face it, even the pointless tags deserve a little bit of love.

And to anyone who says this post was just a thinly-veiled excuse to show a picture of The Fonz, we have only one thing to say: Aaaayhh!

Have you ever had a hairdresser nightmare? You know the kind of thing we’re talking about: some scissor-wielding maniac decides to experiment on your lovely locks, turns you into something resembling the mum from the Addams Family, and you have to pay for the privilege?!

If you read our featured London Review last week, you’ll remember that Qype user BushGirl had her very own hairmare at the Toni and Guy Academy on Oxford Street:

The bits of my hair that tumbled over my face and slumped forlornly on my lap were longer than the bits left stuck in my head. They collected around me like beautiful autumn leaves, except they looked up at me with big sad curls asking me ‘why? why? We did so much for you! Remember when you put those ribbons in us? You’ll never be able to do that with what you’ve decided to keep!’…

…It is the ugliest haircut I have ever been the sorry recipient of. And it is so short I can only wait for it to grow out. I left the hairdresser’s and stepped out onto New Oxford Street and bawled. I tried to tie it back but it’s too short to do so and I bawled again. I went home weeping and sobbing each time I caught my hideous reflection.

The lovely Qype community comforted poor BushGirl, but there was nothing we could do to put right what those scissors had put so very very wrong… or was there?

A few days ago we got a phone call from Rick Stonell at the Rose and Crown hairdressing salon (no, it’s not a boozer, they’re on Rose Street in Covent Garden, geddit?). Rick had read BushGirl’s tale of woe and was offering his considerable expertise to try and sort out her locks for free!

This makes us very very happy indeed. Not only does BushGirl get the hair she deserves in time for the Christmas party season, but we feel great because Qype was able to make a little bit of a difference in the real word. And, even better, it was a local, independent outfit that came to our user’s aid!

So we’d just like to say thank you Rose and Crown Hairdressing. We’re going to write a lovely 5 star Qype review for your salon right now!

From the 20th of December the South Bank in London will be hosting the city’s first ever slow food market.

Organised by Slow Food UK to promote clean, sustainable and fabulous tasting food (which is how we like our food here at Qype), the market will contain 25 stalls including Mark Gilchrist of Game for Everything, a special Christmas range from Patchwork Pâtés, specially prepared rare-bree pork and Somerset Cider Brandy stuffing and sausages courtesy of Sillfield Farm, the Somerset Cider Brandy Company, and Montgomery Cheddar and Stitchelton Blue Cheese from the famous Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Hungry yet?

Well if you fancy getting your taste buds on this fantastic selection of festive foodstuffs then we might be able to help.

The lovely people at the South Bank Employers Group have invited Qype to the opening day of the market and have very kindly extended the invitation to the Qype community.

Welll be visiting the market on the afternoon of Thursday 20th December (we haven’t confirmed a time yet but it will probably around 4ish) where we’ll take a tour of the stalls before retiring to a nearby bar for a bit of VIP Qype treatment.

Unfortunately there’s a limited number of places available for the trip so if you’d like to come along then please send us an email and we’ll put your name down on the list.

And if you can’t make it on the 20th or you’re not in London, then don’t worry because we’ll be holding a lot more events in 2008. Watch this space!

Dear fellow Qypers,

The “official launch” of Qype.fr will be in January, but we are extremely happy to announce that the first version works!

You can now find all the addresses of all those lovely little cafés, hidden corners of Montmartre, and where to eat near the Eiffel Tower.

Now if you want to check out Paris in English, use this link.
If you prefer to experience Paris in the language of love, then go here.

A very happy Qype Team.

One of the questions we get asked a lot here at Qype is ‘how can I integrate my Qype reviews into my personal blog’?

People spend so much time and thought crafting a great review that they want as many people as possible to see it, but having to copy and paste chunks of text into your blogging tool every time you write another review can get tedious very quickly.

So to help you spread the word about your city we’ve added a nifty bit of code which allows you to export your Qype review to a whole host of places with just a click of a button.

Setting it up is a piece of cake: Make sure you’re signed into Qype and navigate your way to your Settings page (under My Qype). Once you’re there you’ll find another an option to Configure Blogs, this is the page where you add the blogs or social networking sites you want to post your reviews to.

If you have a Twitter account, or use Tumblr, or have a blog on Wordpress then all you need is the URL of your homepage and your login details and you’re away.

Once you’ve added your blogs (and you can add as many as you like) then take a look at any of your reviews and, if everything’s working properly then you’ll see a new link at the bottom of the review which reads Post to blog. Just click that and, hey presto, you’re broadcasting to the world.

We hope you like the new tool. Make sure you let us know how you get on with it and send us links to your blogs, we always love to see Qype in action out there in the wild!

Qype attended the inaugural London Bloggers Meetup earlier this week and spent a fantastic few hours chatting to the cream of the capital’s blogging community.

We have to say thanks to Andy Bargery, the man behind the brilliant and endlessly informative Cheap Eats in London, for organising the whole evening; and we should also say a big Qype hello to all the bloggers we met up with, including Kay, Gemma, Stuart, and the rest of the Shiny Media massive (always the last to leave!); Keith, the property guru behind Housing Panic who scared us with his tales of market crashes; Peter Marshall of the exhaustive My London Diary; Tim from the gloriously named Plummet Onions; and Mirona of Cheezy Cheeky.

The gathering was held at the strangely named Camel and Artichoke pub in Waterloo. Click here to read our Qype review.

If you’re in London and you fancy attending the next Bloggers Meetup on December 18th get yourself over to their sign-up page and put your name down. And, in the meantime make sure you keep your eyes peeled for some Qype events and gatherings which will be happening in the next few months.

UPDATE: We’re up to 200 fans now! Thanks, you rock!

We just wanted to say thank you to everyone who signed up to become a fan of Qype on our brand new Facebook page yesterday.

We got a fantastic response, and passed the 100 friends mark in no time at all, which makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So thanks a lot Qypers!

If you haven’t become a fan of Qype make sure you pay a visit to our page and join our growing fanbase of dedicated Qype-aholics, and we’ll enter your name to win a months worth of free travel in London (the city with the most expensive public transport in the world!).

And for all of you who’ve joined us already, keep an eye out for loads of cool stuff in the near future, including exclusive events, more competitions and some terrifying insights into the goings on here at Qype HQ!

:)

Just like your friends, your grandparents and (in some cases) your pets, Qype now has its very own Facebook page and to celebrate we’re running a little competition.

If you sign up to be a ‘fan’ of Qype (by clicking the link in the top right-hand corner of this page) then not only can you virtually mingle with other Qypers from all around the globe and keep bang up-to-date with what we’re doing here at Qype HQ, but we’ll also enter you into a draw to win a free month of London travel.

After all, we’re very aware of the fact that London’s public transport system is the most expensive in the world, so we thought the very least we could do is offer you the chance to save a few pennies around Christmas time.

So head on over to our page to say hello and become a Qype fanboy or fangirl and, who knows, Santa might be bringing you a little something extra come December 25th!

We’re always on the lookout for new, fun stuff to do in our city, so when we heard about Secret Cinema, a series of events happening around the country that are aiming “to put the mystery and excitement back into cinema”, we thought we’d better let you guys know about it too.

Brought to you by the people behind Future Shorts, these secret monthly screenings are going to be held at individually themed locations around the country and will include surprise rescores, special guests and live installations.

To get involved you have to sign up to the website and then you’ll get an email on the morning of the event to let you know where the screening is (very ‘old school rave’ huh?) and you’ll also get a clue as to what film will actually be showing.

And don’t assume that the venue will be your local cinema, apparently the location could be anything from a derelict theatre, to a park or even a rooftop, which is great because, as you know we’re pretty keen about discovering new places to visit here at Qype.

The opening event is in London on December 16th so make sure you get signed up now if you’re in the capital (we’ll be there, so let us know if you’re going). After that you should look out for events in Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast.